Ask five people how they prefer to pay for things online and you will get five different answers. One taps Apple Pay without thinking. One only buys through PayPal because the dispute process saved her last year. One still mails a check to her professional association every January because that is how the association has always done it. And one will not enter a credit card number into a site she has never heard of, full stop.

That mix is your prospective member list. If your checkout only speaks one of those languages, the others go shop somewhere else.

Paid Memberships Pro (PMPro) lets you offer credit card, PayPal, and Pay by Check side by side on the same checkout page. This post covers why it matters, how to set up each method, what the combined checkout looks like to a member, and a few things to know before you flip everything on.

Why Multiple Payment Methods Actually Move the Needle

If you have not looked at cart abandonment averages recently, they can be shocking. The Baymard Institute puts the average online cart abandonment rate at around 70% across industries. Most of those abandonments are not because the product is wrong. It’s due to the friction at checkout. In Baymard’s research on the reasons people gave for abandoning a checkout they had already started, “there were not enough payment methods” or “I did not trust the site with my credit card information” appears in roughly one out of ten responses.

One in ten is not a rounding error. On a page that converts at 5%, recovering even a slice of those drop-offs is the difference between a slow month and a good one.

A few patterns are worth knowing about:

• PayPal users prefer to stay inside PayPal: A long-running PYMNTS and PayPal study found that a meaningful share of online buyers will abandon a purchase if PayPal is not offered, even when a credit card field is right there. For these buyers, PayPal is not “another option.” It is the only option they trust on a site they do not know yet.
• Older, offline, and association audiences still mail checks: If your membership replaces or augments an existing offline group (a club, a chamber, a professional society, a religious organization), some percentage of your renewals will come in the mail. Forcing those members onto a credit card is a great way to lose them at renewal time.
• International buyers have local preferences: A European member may expect SEPA. A buyer in some regions may expect bank transfer. You will not solve every regional preference with PayPal and Pay by Check, but the two together cover a lot more ground than a credit card field alone.

Most members will never touch a second or third payment method, but the one who needs it will leave if it is not there.

Set Up PayPal as a Second Payment Option

The PayPal Gateway Add On layers PayPal on top of your existing payment gateway. It uses PayPal’s newest payments API: automatic webhook registration, and live and sandbox credentials from a single settings screen.

Before you start

You will need:

• An active PayPal Business account.
• HTTPS on your site (required for the webhook).
• PMPro 3.7.1 or later, already configured with a working primary payment gateway (Stripe or whatever you use today).

Step-by-step

1. In your WordPress admin, navigate to Memberships > Add Ons. Search for “PayPal Gateway” and click Install Now, then Activate.

2. Navigate to developer.paypal.com and log in with your PayPal account.

   • Open the Developer Dashboard, toggle to Sandbox in the top left, and select Apps & Credentials.

   • Click Create App (or use the default app if one exists), then copy the Client ID and Client Secret from the app detail page.

   • Repeat under Live when you are ready to go live.

Copy the Client ID and Client Secret from your app’s detail page in the PayPal Developer Dashboard.

3. Once you have your credentials, navigate to Memberships > Settings > Payments.
   • Select PayPal from the Payment Gateway dropdown and set the Gateway Environment to Sandbox or Live.
   • Click Edit Settings for PayPal, enter your Client ID and Client Secret for that environment, and click Save Settings.
   • If you want PayPal to run as a secondary option next to a different default gateway, confirm the exact toggle for that in your settings screen. It is supported, but worth a quick look before you publish this live.

Paste your Client ID and Client Secret into the matching Sandbox or Live section. The webhook registers itself once you save.

4. Confirm the checkout shows the option. Open your membership checkout page in an incognito window and click through to the Check Out with PayPal button.

Run a test purchase in Sandbox. Use PayPal’s Card Testing tool to generate a test card number, or create a sandbox buyer account under Sandbox > Accounts in the Developer Dashboard. Confirm the member lands back on your site, membership access activates (this can take a few seconds up to a couple of minutes while PayPal’s webhook confirms the payment), and the order shows up correctly in Memberships > Orders.

Set Up Pay by Check for Offline and Invoice Payments

The Pay by Check Add On, officially “Pay by Check: Manual and Offline Payments,” adds a manual option to checkout. The label says “Pay by Check,” but the Gateway Label is editable, so sites use it for a mailed check, Venmo, a bank transfer, cash, or an invoice handled outside the site. The member completes registration and you confirm payment separately.

This is the path most associations, training organizations, and B2B membership sites need.

Before you start

You will need:

• Your mailing address or payment instructions (whatever you want the member to see on the confirmation page and email).
• A plan for how you want to handle renewal reminders and non-payment. The Add On has built-in settings for both, covered below.

Step-by-step

1. Navigate to Memberships > Add Ons, search for “Pay by Check,” and click Install Now, then Activate.

2. Navigate to Memberships > Settings > Payments.

   • In Global Settings, select Pay by Check as the Payment Gateway, choose whether the Gateway Environment is Live/Production or Sandbox/Testing, and click Save All Settings.

3. Scroll down and click Edit Settings for Check (Pay by Check).

4. Adjust the Gateway Label if you want something other than “Check” (for example, “Venmo” or “Direct Deposit”), then fill in the Instructions field with what you want the member to see and receive by email: your mailing address, a Venmo username, a bank routing/account number, or a note that you will invoice them separately. Save.

5. You can leave Pay by Check as the site’s only payment gateway, or go back to Memberships > Settings > Payments and select a different gateway (like Stripe) as primary. The Pay by Check settings stay saved in the background either way, so it still appears as an option at checkout.

6. Set the level-by-level rules. Navigate to Memberships > Levels, edit a level, and find the Pay by Check/Manual Settings section.

   • Set Allow Pay by Check/Manual to only, optional, or required for that level, and set Send Renewal Emails, Send Reminder Emails, and Cancel Membership (days after a missed payment) to match your policy. Repeat for each level that should offer this option.

7. Save and verify. Open the checkout page in an incognito window. You should see the new option in the payment method selector. Run a test signup with it to confirm the confirmation page and email both show your instructions.

What the member sees

A member who selects the manual payment option skips the credit card fields entirely. They land on a confirmation page showing your instructions (“Make checks payable to…”, “Mail to…”, etc.) and get a confirmation email with the same instructions. Their order is created with status Pending, and depending on the level’s Allow Pay by Check/Manual setting, their membership access may be held until you confirm payment.

The payment method selector a member sees when Pay by Check is active alongside a primary gateway.

You decide how to handle the rest. When the check clears (or the invoice is paid), go to Memberships > Orders and mark the order paid. There are a few ways to do this: a quick action right from the Orders list, a button on the order’s edit page, or by editing the order’s status directly on that page. PMPro then activates the membership fully and sends the standard welcome email.

What Checkout Looks Like With All Three Methods Active

When both Add Ons are installed and configured alongside your primary gateway, your checkout page presents the member with a single payment-method selector near the top of the form. Three options:

• Credit Card: your default.
• PayPal: minimal form, then a redirect to PayPal to complete payment.
• Check: instructions appear and the form collapses to skip the card fields.

Most members will choose the default and never think about the others. That is the point. The two extra options are there for the members who do think about it.

A few admin things to know about the combined view:

• Order of options: Credit Card is always presented first as the default. PayPal and Pay by Check appear after it. You cannot drag-reorder the methods, but you can limit Pay by Check to specific levels using the level settings above.
• Reporting: Every order is tagged with its payment method in Memberships > Orders. You can filter the orders list by gateway to see how many came in via PayPal versus card versus check. After a month or two of real data, that filter tells you whether your second and third options are paying for themselves.
• Renewals: Recurring renewals always run on the gateway the member originally checked out with. A PayPal member renews through PayPal. A Pay by Check member generates a renewal order in Pending status that you collect on manually. (See the troubleshooting section below.)

Filter the Orders list by Gateway to see how each payment method is performing.Things to Know Before You Turn It All On

A short, honest list of edge cases for each method. None of these are deal-breakers, but they will save you a confused support ticket later.

PayPal

• Subscription status syncs from PayPal, not the other way around: PayPal subscriptions, next payment dates, and billing cycles sync into PMPro directly via the automatic webhook. If a member cancels from inside their PayPal account instead of your site, PMPro picks that up through the same webhook and cancels the membership. Some “cancellations” will arrive from PayPal rather than your site’s cancel flow, and that is expected.
• Refunds for PayPal orders happen in PMPro admin: Unlike the old integration, refunds for one-time and subscription payments can be issued directly from the PMPro order screen.
• Webhook confirmation is not instant: Membership access is granted once PayPal confirms the payment, not the moment the member lands back on your site. Usually a few seconds, occasionally up to a couple of minutes.
• Sandbox webhooks need a public HTTPS URL: They will not fire on localhost, so test on a staging site with HTTPS, not your local machine.

Pay by Check

• Whether membership activates before payment arrives depends on the level setting: The Allow Pay by Check/Manual setting on each level (only, optional, or required) controls this, along with whatever access rules you have for Pending status. Many sites accept the smoother signup over making someone wait for content while a check moves through the mail.
• Recurring payments generate a new pending order on each renewal: A member on a yearly recurring level will get a new pending order on their renewal date that you confirm manually, the same as their first payment.
• Non-payment can now auto-cancel: Each level’s Cancel Membership setting lets you specify how many days after a missed payment the membership cancels automatically. Combine it with Send Reminder Emails so members get a heads-up before that happens.

Next Step

The best version of this change is undramatic. You install two Add Ons, paste in a few credentials, write a paragraph of payment instructions, and your checkout quietly grows two new options. Members who would have left now stay.

Install the PayPal Gateway Add On and the Pay by Check Add On, configure them with the steps above, and run a test purchase on each method. Then check Memberships > Orders in a month and look at the payment method breakdown. That is the number that tells you whether this was worth the afternoon.

If you run into a snag during setup or want a second set of eyes on your configuration, post on the members support forum. We are happy to help.